Carly Simon

“Sometimes, but the year I lived in France I started to write songs.”

“One of the things that has always motivated me to write is the desire to get it out and look at it in an objective way, so that it doesn't cause me any serious pain by staying inside.”

“I just want to show off my scar proudly and not be afraid of it.”

“Being in this business for as long as I've been in it, it's sort of like living in a town or a city before the war and then after the war and then during the reconstruction and then during the time that it sprawls out to the malls.”

“I try to get to those peculiar and particular things that you never think of to say.”

“A really strong woman accepts the war she went through and is ennobled by her scars.”

“As a singer I tried on all these hats, these voices, these clothes, and eventually out came me.”

“You know, people want to honor me, and on the one hand I just don't want to be a poster child; but on the other, I want to do something classy and great - something where the residuals will go to the cause.”

“My father was a classical pianist, and my mother was a singer of just about everything.”

“You know when you take the paint off an old canvas and you discover that something's been painted underneath it? That's what I feel like - that part of the old is coming through the new.”

“I remember being onstage once when I didn't have fear: I got so scared I didn't have fear that it brought on an anxiety attack.”

“You usually can't tell what's inspiring until you look back on it.”

“Well, I tried to get a record deal in 1966 or '67, and everyone thought I was too eclectic.”

“I've gone through the village of my songwriting and my artistry, and I've gone through lots of different phases, including one where it has been very quiet and abandoned me for a few years.”

“We need role models who are going to break the mold.”

“My look was even more solidified when I started singing in Greenwich Village with my sister Lucy. We wore matching dresses as the Simon Sisters.”

“I had a mastectomy in 1998, and then chemo.”

“I had this terrible stammer, so I couldn't really speak properly until I was 16 or 17.”

“Well, I make every song I sing personal. I've never chosen a song that wasn't.”

“No, because I was always nervous about being onstage.”